


Home Sweet Home

by empollard



Series: Kill Processes [2]
Category: Watch Dogs (Video Games)
Genre: A little angst, Action/Adventure, Backstory, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Some Explicit Language, Wrench being Wrench, probably AU, related to Kill Processes or Delete Child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-14
Updated: 2018-06-14
Packaged: 2019-05-23 05:05:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14927670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/empollard/pseuds/empollard
Summary: A little backstory for Wrench that fits with my multi-chapter fic Kill Processes or Delete Child. Wrench visits his family home to find it deserted so he settles in for a bit, decides lockpicking sucks, crashes DedSec's hackerspaces, pisses off Sitara (because she cares), harasses Josh, blows shit up and ends up getting his own garage space out of it all.





	Home Sweet Home

**Author's Note:**

> So, I'll apologize in advance--this story seriously got away from me. It wasn't meant to be even 1/3rd this long but Wrench is kinda pushy so, there you have it. This is in the same universe as Kill Processes but you don't really have to read that to enjoy this one. It does add a little more flavor and it explains some relatively minor things that I don't expand on in this story (an OC, Barty, and the data Wrench is hiding in their house as well as a bit of his background that's not covered here).
> 
> I should note that I don't particularly like Reggie as Wrench's real name so I've made his name Brandon and headcanon that Marcus was just messing with him when he said Reggie.

Home Sweet Home

2012--same universe as Kill Processes

 

When he first ran away in 2007, he’d avoided Pacific Heights as if it was ground zero to the zombie apocalypse. He skirted around the area for five years, like if you pulled out a map of San Francisco, there’d be a hole there instead of one of the most affluent neighborhoods in the city. Not that he had any reason to go there, anyway. It’s not like a 16-year-old runaway or even a 20-year-old hacker/pyromaniac could afford a place in that neighborhood, no matter how brilliant and devilishly handsome they are. Then one night, shortly after he turned 21, he’d drunk just enough for the liquid confidence to kick in and he found himself taking that surprisingly still familiar route to his childhood home. He couldn’t pin downwhat he was thinking at the time or if he was thinking at all but 20 minutes later had him sitting on a bike across the street, staring at the house watching for he didn’t know what. He pulled out one of two bottles of beer he had left in his bag and popped the top off, leaning against the bike, and sipping slowly to make it last. Sipping lasted all of 3 minutes.

Ten minutes later, the bottle of beer empty and the buzz working it’s way solidly into the tipsy a.k.a. reckless phase, Wrench realized there was no one in the house. At all. Which was weird because even when his family was gone (minus him, of course, since he’d apparently never qualified as family and shut the fuck up about that because he wasn’t drunk enough yet to be maudlin), there was someone at the house all the time--servants, security, some poor company bitch who had to shine his dad’s shoes or something equally demeaning. Ok that last one probably never happened. Maybe. He shook his head and tossed the bottle aside carelessly.

He suddenly found himself standing in front of the picture window near the front door, looking in at the living room and wondering when he’d actually crossed the street. The curtains were drawn shut but there was enough of a slit between the panels for him to see in a little. The house was dark, not unexpected at...he glanced down at his phone...2:13 am. But the light from the security panel in the entryway hall fell across the room bathing a portion of it in a weird digital looking green. The furniture was covered with white dust covers. Some knickknacks and artwork had been removed and all of the plants were gone.

Wrench pulled back abruptly from the window with a slight weave, his brain trying to process everything. They’d closed the house. Must be living somewhere else. It would explain why there wasn’t anyone around. Wrench got a sly look on his face and < < on his mask, heading back across the street to grab his laptop from his bag. About 10 minutes later, give or take a minute, he’d hacked into the security system and shut everything down. Slipping around the back, he checked in the key safe next to the back porch. Excited to find the spare key still there, he threw his fists in the air with a loud yes before shushing himself in alarm, looking around to make sure no one had heard him. Satisfied he hadn’t somehow woken up the entire neighborhood, he grabbed his laptop and slid the key into the lock after three misses because the door wouldn’t quite sit still.

The place smelled musty, like it had been closed up for awhile. He wasn’t sure how long they’d been gone but it was at least a couple of years, he guessed. He walked through the back rooms and into the main hallway. The layout of the house was slightly unusual--his parents didn't like being on the second floor so the master bedroom took up almost half of the first floor at the back of the house with a private hallway connecting the dining room and their sitting room.

He was unprepared for the wave of emotions that swept over him as he passed the staircase making him pause a moment to collect himself. He had to fight the urge to slip his shoes off and tiptoe around the place like he did growing up but this didn’t stop him from treading lightly or hugging the wall as he moved into the living room. A shadow, that’s what he’d been back then--something no one wanted to see or hear. As soon as he realized what he was doing, he pushed away from the wall, tripping over his feet in his inebriated state, and stomped across the room to drop onto the couch. Reaching over, he flicked the lamp to life, surprised to realize that the electricity was still on. This gave him pause for a bit until he realized that the alarms would require it to function so his father had likely left it turned on for that reason. He wondered what other utilities were still running.

A quick assessment of the place gave him his answer. The water and electricity were a go. Internet and cable were turned off. Not a problem. Checking nearby networks showed two potentials--a quick login to one of the routers (would people ever learn to change the factory settings?) and the owner would likely never even know he was there. Giving himself cable was almost as easy. Which is how he ended up sitting on the couch in the living room of his childhood home at the age of 21, his mask on the seat beside him, watching AVP (one of his favorites because it reminded him of Barty) on his family’s big screen, drinking his last beer and messing around on his laptop creating a little program that would erase his visit from the security records. It was also how he ended up passed out face down on the same couch 4 hours later, his laptop tucked under his arm like a lover and the tv playing some random movie on cable.

When he woke up the next afternoon with cotton-mouth and a surprisingly mild headache, he wasn’t sure what to think. He put everything back as he’d found it, slid his mask in place, hopped back on the bike he’d “borrowed” and headed to his current crash pad in a part of town that was about as opposite of Pacific Heights as you could get.

Wrench wasn’t into planning and he didn’t really do regret. That was Brandon’s gig. If an opportunity presented itself, he usually grabbed on with both hands and didn’t let go until something had exploded or been destroyed. When he found himself, for the umpteenth time that day, pacing around the small room, going over what he’d done the night before, wondering if he should’ve just left things well-enough alone, it was with a heavy dose of frustration. He didn’t like it when his old personality reared it’s pathetic, fearful head, especially after he’d worked so hard to turn himself into the complete opposite of that loser. While he definitely didn’t want his family finding him, when he was presented with such a golden opportunity...Oh fuck it! He started packing up a few necessary items and was on the road in minutes, with a short stop at a local pizza joint.

That night found him back at his family home with a Canadian bacon and pineapple pizza, his dad’s data and a serious case of the Fuck-You’s. There was a delicious sort of justice in using the family home to store the data he’d stolen from his father, a satisfying feeling of sticking it to them by treating the place like his own personal hotel all doused with a good bit of adrenaline at the thought of potentially getting caught.

And they’d only ever come close once when he was 17, just a year after running away. Trevor--one of the security guards he thought was a “good” one--followed him around one day. Wrench actually almost missed him completely cause he was still really new to being on his own and losing a tail. As soon as he realized the guy was following him, he’d taken him on a rather circuitous route and led him straight to one of the lifts he’d hijacked earlier that week (her name was Sonja, if anyone was wondering). Interesting thing was, the guy had laughed when he flipped him off and then nothing ever came of it. He’d laid low for awhile but never saw any indication that anyone was still looking for him. He decided maybe Trevor _was_ one of the good ones--he’d been one of the few that had treated him decently as a kid. In fact, he was the one that got him hooked on pineapple pizza in the first place.

He'd been 11 years old at the time and in the 3 days Trevor spent watching over him while his family was off on some trip doing something fun that Brandon would never be invited to join, they'd watched several action movies in the living room, eaten pizza and ice cream and played video games together. It had been one of the few times Brandon felt almost normal. Naturally, it didn't last.

In the middle of the third day, he couldn't resist asking if Trevor would be back. Brandon was perched on the couch, a large Hawaiian pizza, his new favorite, half-eaten on the coffee table and a Jimmy Siska movie playing on the big-screen tv. Trevor was standing near the kitchen archway, having just hung up from a phone call. He looked over at the blonde boy, squatting on the couch as if preparing himself to bolt at the slightest hint of danger. The words had been spoken too softly, which was how Brandon did everything. The kid was a ninja--Trevor frequently found himself looking around while they were eating or watching TV just to make sure he was still in the room. Even his laugh was quiet and, invariably, hidden behind a hand, as if he had to be secretive about enjoying something. It made his blood boil and his stomach clench. But what was worse, what made the guilt completely choke him, was that he wouldn't be doing a damn thing about it. He couldn't. Not if he valued his job, his life, possibly his sister’s life.

His response could've been worded better. “It's an assignment, kid. I go where they tell me to.” He saw the boy flinch before softly letting him know he was going to work on something in his room and slipping away as quietly as he did everything else.

The nice ones never, ever came back.

Wrench remembered thinking that there must have been something about him that drove people away. Of course, now he knew that was total bullshit. Well, logically he knew it. Couldn't always convince himself that was true but mostly he just ignored the emotional crap and focused on having fun and fucking up as much shit as possible.

Settling into his family's old home, he filled the fridge up with beer and leftovers, spent more time on the couch in the living room in a week than he’d ever been allowed to during his entire childhood, and even ventured into parts of the house he’d been barred from as a kid, most notably his brother’s and parents’ rooms.

And Lance’s room was easy. Up the stairs two at a time and he burst in with an attitude, taking in the sheer size of the room, queen size bed, mattresses sealed in plastic, posters on the wall (mostly famous athletes) and a shelf lined with trophies while the wall underneath held multiple certificates and awards from school and clubs. He idly wondered why Lance or their mom hadn’t taken the awards and trophies as he pulled dust covers off of the desk and a small, but expensive, stereo. The next dust cover revealed a nice wooden dresser because _of course_ he had a dresser. Most definitely had it filled with clothes that actually fit rather than oversized hand-me-downs from his dick of an older brother. His eyes passed over everything again, coming to rest on the trophies and awards. It took him five seconds to come to a decision then back down the stairs, still two at a time, jump the last four to land with a heavy thud on the first floor and down the hall to the entryway where he’d leaned his sledgehammer when he’d first arrived, right next to the small table that held his mask. Then back up the stairs to Lance’s room.

He started with the trophies, the loud crashing sound echoed into the hallway as metal, plastic and wood flew across the room. The metal football trophy that got caught directly in the sledgehammer’s path ended up partially embedded in the drywall. The next swing aimed for the framed awards still hanging on the wall. Glass shattered as several frames bounced off the wall and crashed to the floor. This time the swing made an actual hole in the drywall. Wrench yanked the sledgehammer out with a jerk.

The stereo was next. Followed by the desk. He saved the dresser for last, though he wasn’t sure why that bothered him more than a damn desk or a stereo and he didn’t really want to examine it too closely. When the only whole furniture left was the bed, he dropped the sledgehammer and started on the framed pictures, plucking them off one by one and smashing them violently to the ground. For his final “renovation” he went after the posters on the walls, ripping them in pieces and letting the paper litter the floor alongside chunks of wood, bits of glass and pieces of twisted metal.

He stepped back, breathing heavily, and surveyed the destruction with satisfaction. The only thing that would make it better would be setting fire to the room and possibly an explosion or two. In the end, common sense won out--he couldn’t very well hide data there or use the place for an occasional get-away if he burned it down. Instead, he grabbed the sledgehammer and moved purposefully back down the hall towards his room, thinking he would lay waste to it as well while he was up there.

Entering the room made him stagger as the memories came crashing down.  He'd spent most of his childhood here. Taught himself how to hack in this room. Taken apart his first electronic (a toy stolen from his brother) and put it back together so the user would get a shock every time they pushed a certain button--it had been so worth the punishment watching his brother zap himself several times before they figured out he’d done something to it. He’d hidden in here under the bed or in the closet when he was afraid, sad, lonely; more times than he cared to consider.

Looking around the room now was, frankly, depressing. It was a little less than half the size of his brother’s room and, because of its position in the layout of the house, there were no windows. Just plain walls. He had a couple of posters up of music groups he liked at the time. Nothing framed, of course. Overall, the room was rather bare. A single twin bed and they hadn’t bothered covering these mattresses in plastic. A taped bean bag that his brother had been getting rid of (the hole wasn’t too large and duct tape is magical). He’d had a desk and chair once--well more of a small table that he used as a desk--but after 5 years of regular use and abuse as a kid, it finally fell apart when he was 11 and he’d reluctantly tossed it out. He’d preferred sitting on his bed to work, anyway. Or, at least that’s what he convinced himself of as a kid.

He’d convinced himself of a lot of things as a kid.

He suddenly realized he wasn’t drunk enough for this shit and headed to the kitchen to remedy the situation, dropping his sledgehammer next to the couch on his way to the beer. A six-pack and a couple of hours later found him cross-legged on the floor, engrossed in lines of code, his bedroom a stifled memory he’d shoved to the back of his brain. Probably not far enough, though. He didn’t go near his room again for several days.

His parent’s room, on the other hand, landed at the top of the list the next day. While the sun was up and he felt like he could take on anything, he grabbed the sledgehammer and headed up the hallway toward their sitting room only to find his steps faltering as he got closer to the door. He’d only ever been in their sitting room once, in the middle of the night when the scheduled night security guy found him rooting around in the kitchen for food and decided his dad needed to be told for some reason. It had been one of the few times he hadn’t actually gotten in trouble, for the most part. But still, standing in front of his father, even on a good day, had made Brandon twitchy. Facing him in his sitting room in the middle of the night after he’d been woken from a dead sleep? Terrifying. For Brandon, anyway. Wrench would’ve said something flippant or rude then probably grabbed a beer from the fridge.

Wrench would have plopped down on one of the fancy wingbacks and thrown his feet up on the rather delicate-looking coffee table they had in their sitting room just to piss them off.

Wrench wouldn’t have been afraid.

He stood at the door, his sledgehammer resting on the ground beside him and his hand hovering over the crystal doorknob, debating the idea of putting his mask on before entering the room. Wrench wouldn't be afraid.

He _wasn’t_ afraid.

He twisted the knob and pushed the door open, leaving the sledgehammer where it rested in the hall and pausing as he stepped inside. His eyes roamed around the room, taking in the sheer amount of _stuff_ there was, and all of it protected by dust covers even the paintings on the walls. He tilted his head a bit, debating, and quickly decided he needed to see everything--see the room the way it was when he lived here before. Right now, it felt both crowded and airy because of all the white covering everything. Like there were ghosts everywhere but nothing substantial. Yeah, he was a fucking philosopher.

Making a disgusted face at himself, he started pulling the dust covers off of everything: chairs, couches, tables, paintings...he wanted everything exposed. A few minutes later, he dropped the last white canvas cover on top of the large pile in the corner of the room, sneezing from the dust, before turning to take stock again.

He found himself right beside the marble-topped console placed against the wall just inside the room. Two steps toward the door and he’d be standing in the same place he had 7 years ago. Unconsciously, he moved in front of the console and stood looking around the room trying to recapture the memory. He’d been holding a plate of food and feeling equal parts ridiculous and terrified. Ridiculous because he'd just been grabbing food from the kitchen in the house (never _home_ ) where he lived. Whether they wanted him around or not he had to eat some time. Terrified because he couldn't remember a time standing before his father that didn't end up with him being physically hurt in some way. Which seemed ludicrous in retrospect. Dad couldn't have hit him or beat the crap out of him every single time he saw him. Right?

He shook his head to clear the memory and instead turned his attention to his surroundings. It looked...smaller somehow. Of course he was 14 when he'd been here before. He sauntered through the room, picking up a statuette here, some expensive knick-knack there. There was a fancy looking decorated egg on a gold stand on one shelf. A fucking _egg_?! He stared at the thing for a good three minutes with a puzzled look on his face before shaking his head, grabbing the offending object and moving on to the next shiny item. They had so many things.

He was standing in front of a painting, tossing the egg into the air and catching it while staring at the red-haired woman playing some kind of instrument (a small harp, maybe?) in the picture, when the idea struck him. With a wicked smirk he tossed the egg aside and went out to the living room to root around in his bag for a bit, making a triumphant sound as he pulled out a black Sharpie. Gotta be prepared in case you run across some offensive poster that needed to be “fixed.” He always had at least a couple of Sharpies and frequently a large permanent marker of some sort in his bag for these occasions. Not that he was any kind of artist with ink or markers though he could engineer just about any kind of digital device or weapon you would need. And when it came to fire or explosions, he was definitely an artist--maybe of the Jackson Pollock variety but with flames and grenades instead of paint.

A few hours later, he finished redecorating his parents’ rooms. He'd started in the sitting room. A moustache here, goatee there. Memes galore on the probably priceless works of art. He moved figurines and knick-knacks into obscene positions. Nothing was sacred. Not the Madonna (was his family actually Christian?). Not the family portrait (minus him, naturally). Not the obnoxiously overpriced decorations or ornaments. The bedroom was more of the same though he tried to be as creative as possible in his desecrations. Putting an innocent looking ballet dancer and some snotty looking prince figure in a surprisingly well-fitting 69. Adding a UFO and beam of light over a cow in some landscape-y type picture. All in all, it was as satisfying, in its own way, as destroying Lance’s room had been. But more artistic, he thought, nodding his head with pride.

He spent the rest of the first week exploring the house from top to bottom. There was an attic filled with all kinds of crap he didn’t give a rat’s ass about (junk related to his blood-relatives that he didn’t know and didn’t care to know). There was a super nice guest room just down the hall from his crappy little bedroom. Queen sized bed, tv, mini-fridge and even a dresser (yes, again with the dresser thing). He spent a couple of nights in that room spread out across the bed watching tv and grabbing beers out of the mini-fridge.

There was a den/game room towards the back of the house--another one of those rooms he hardly ever went in when he was a kid. It had a pool table, ping pong table, wet bar, stereo and another giant-screen tv. The couch wasn’t quite as comfy as the living room but watching Jimmy Siska on a giant-screen tv was pure awesome. The explosions alone were orgasmic. Nevermind watching porn on a giant-screen tv in your old posh family home, which was “satisfying” on so many levels.

The biggest surprise was the workout room across from the living room. He’d never been in there and had no idea it even existed--not that he cared since he wasn’t much of a gym rat. The kitchen, dining rooms (plural--cause God knows you can’t have just one, you gotta have a “formal” one for all the fancy-ass guests), and William’s Office were all pretty familiar to him, even if he didn’t spend a lot of time with anyone in any of those rooms--well, except for Billy’s Office which was usually where his father would act as judge and executioner with him. Not that his bedroom had been a safe haven or anything. His father, mother, brother, not to mention a few of the security guys assigned to watch him and the property whenever his family went away, as well as a couple of tutors he’d had before--actually, pretty much anyone with the run of the house had access to his bedroom since there hadn’t been an internal lock on his door. Well, technically there had been an internal lock but in a fit of anger and fear one time, at the age of 7, he’d locked the door to keep his father out. It didn’t work--William broke the lock, beat the crap out of him anyway and then had the doorknob replaced with the lock on the outside only so, lucky him, he could be locked in his room but couldn’t keep anyone out. Funny thing was he only remembered being locked in once or twice. Probably cause it wasn’t much of a punishment for him--he’d always preferred staying away from his family and most of the staff, considering how they treated him.

Aaand...he was back at his bedroom. He’d skirted around it for 5 days--worked his way from top to bottom in the house, and debated or tested several hiding places for the data drives he’d stolen from his father. Truth was, his room still ended up feeling like the best place to hide them--maybe because it had been his own space and about as safe a place as he could find in the house while growing up there. Which put him sitting in the floor of his closet on Sunday, two loose floorboards set off to the side and Wrench’s...actually, Brandon’s stash of whatever had been important to him at the time. There was a Deadpool comic (he shoulda taken that with him, what the hell was he thinking?!), a couple of girly magazines (there was no way that model's fun bags were real), some very old small bags of candy (after a brief internal debate, even he couldn’t justify eating them), and, _holy crap!_ there was the lockpicking set he’d bought online. He’d completely forgotten about that. Another item he should’ve brought with him, not that he'd ever learned how to use it very well.

He dropped the bags of candy back in his hidey hole, tossing the Deadpool comic and girly magazines onto his bed and sliding the lockpick set into his pocket. There were tons of doors in this house, including a couple of locked drawers and a cabinet in his dad’s office so he’d have plenty of chances to improve his skills with it. The data drives were stored in an anti-static bag and then inside a black cloth bag to help protect them. He made sure they would fit into the hidey hole and then placed the floorboards back in place, standing back and checking that it actually looked undisturbed. Maybe something about digging through his old stash made him feel nostalgic or safe, as if he’d exorcised whatever demons had previously haunted his room. He ended up sleeping in his bed for most of the rest of the month, curled up around his laptop like he’d done as a teen.

The rest of the month was spent reviewing his father’s data, practicing picking locks and vetting the different hacking groups in the city. It had been made been made painfully aware to him that he wouldn’t be able to topple the Philips’ empire on his own when he’d managed to take down CirrusNet, a smallish hosting company that was part of his father’s corporate group. The company was ahead of its time, solely focused on cloud hosting, and Wrench was convinced his father was planning on making it a cornerstone for his empire over time. He was hoping that destroying the company would cause more issues than it apparently did since there was barely a mention of it in the papers and Wrench never saw any major financial shuffling to indicate he'd made any kind of dent in the Philip's fortune. After close to 4 years trying to bring down CirrusNet, it was disappointing to see nothing else come from it. All the fucking work he did amounted to nothing against the massive corporate group his parents owned.

Which is what brought him to the point of looking for a hacker group he could throw in with that might provide him with opportunities to hit the Philips harder, even if it was through peripheral companies they'd invested in, like all the major players (Nudle, _fucking_ Blume [the company intent on making it as hard as possible for him to hide], ScoutX, InVite, Galilei, and even Tidis). Yeah, his dad had fingers in everybody's pies. Hopefully Wrench could find a hole or two in one of those investments and exploit the fuck out of it. And, more and more, he was thinking DedSec might be the group to work with.

While he seemed to be reaching a conclusion in his hacktivist hunt, his lockpicking practice was a complete bust. He'd parked himself on the floor in front of a locked cabinet in his father's office and tried to follow the instructions he’d found online. Slide two of the too small tools into the keyhole, lift up here, twist around there, press in further slide over...and suddenly his fingers were knotted around themselves and the tools were slipping from his grasp. He took a deep breath and tried again. Actually, he tried again five times. Somewhere around the fifth attempt he had a rather forceful epiphany. Slide the tools in, lift up...lift...lift UP, twist around...twist a-...twist a-...TWIST AROUND, press in, slide...slide...SLIDE OV...AAAAAH FUCK IT! STUPID ASS FUCKING CABINET...the violent kick to the door, popped the cabinet open. And Wrench realized lockpicking was too fucking fiddly for him. Soldering tiny parts on a circuit board? He'd take as long as he needed to get it right. But, poking at a frickin keyhole with tiny metal sticks when he could just break the fuck out of it with a sledgehammer? Screw the lockpick. NOT worth his time.

Fortunately, DedSec ended up being a better fit. In the middle of the month, Wrench began reaching out to contacts and scouting the city until he figured out where a couple of their hackerspaces were. Then he just started showing up and hanging out like he belonged. He set himself up at an empty workbench and kept an eye on everything going on around him while he tinkered. Mostly he worked on weapons (flash grenades, devices that would distract or incapacitate, and a wide variety of guns) in between watching hackers interacting, coming and going between missions, and the overall flow of how they worked.

He decided the hackerspace under Gary's Gaming shop was the hub of San Francisco's DedSec. There were three regulars there. Sitara was some badass artist hacker who appeared to be in charge of “marketing”. Horatio was smart, talented at hacking and was the man with the plan--he apparently handled logistics for their different ops. And then there was Josh, a teenage runaway, genius at coding, sweet, autistic, naive, and colossally easy to tease. The SF “branch” was kind of obsessive about not having a leader or a lot of rules, both of which suited the anarchist in Wrench to a tee. It also meant it was a lot easier for him to insinuate himself into the group. Or, more accurately, plop himself in the middle of their space and pretend like he belonged until they got used to seeing him around.

Which worked surprisingly well. Not that they took to him immediately or trusted him right away. In fact, he was pretty sure Horatio thought he was a narc or part of some gang for awhile. And one day, while he was working on this sweet shotgun/grenade launcher hybrid, he glanced up to find Sitara staring at him as if trying to determine the most efficient way to cut off his nuts and feed them to him. Or maybe that was just his imagination which should instead be giving him images of the admittedly hot street artist wearing nothing but a thong, spike heels and...ooh, maybe some of those lacy thigh highs...he glanced over at Sitara again, hoping his fantasy had magically come to life, only to find her still staring...no _glaring..._ at him in a disturbing fashion. As if she _knew_ what he'd been thinking about a moment ago. He broke out in a cold sweat and turned his attention back to his weapon pretending to be completely focused on his work and not in the least affected by the feeling of her eyes boring holes into the side of his head.

And Josh? He seemed to have two problems with Wrench. The first one, Wrench’s extreme personality, he figured Josh would get used to that with time. The second one...well, they'd just have to agree to disagree. Wrench’s code, his whole method of coding, was raw, aggressive. He ignored conventional formatting, tested boundaries and didn't always clean up after himself, which he figured was fine as long as the code did what he wanted. Who cared if he commented out a line here and there instead of deleting them when he was done testing? Josh’s code, on the other hand, was all clean lines and precision. He was a stickler for formatting and always went back through his programs multiple times looking for errors, extraneous code or unnecessary characters.  He immediately took issue with Wrench’s code and methods which led to more than a few arguments. Wrench had to give him credit, though. Josh’s code was pure, brilliant.

And Josh didn't hold a grudge, either. For all the arguing they did over proper formatting, when Wrench gave Josh a really out-of-the-box suggestion to fix an issue he was running into with the rather impressive rc jumper car he was designing, Josh didn't hesitate to test the idea which worked brilliantly (of course). Wrench immediately turned that into ammo against Josh for the next couple of weeks, teasing him mercilessly until Sitara somehow managed to hack into his laptop and set his screensaver to trigger randomly and show a picture of a gang of evil puppies attacking some poor child. Sitara claimed they were just playing with the little boy (who had suspiciously blonde hair and probably was supposed to represent Wrench as a child) but Wrench knew better. He could see it in their puppy eyes--a soul-sucking evil that was going to destroy humanity one day. He stopped teasing Josh for quite awhile after cleaning the horrifying image off of his laptop.

The final week that he stayed at his family home brought another win for Wrench. His own space in the form of a garage, though it came to him in a rather roundabout way. DedSec had been working on exposing Manny Linden, the corrupt CFO of a local business and Wrench volunteered to collect the final pieces of data they needed to fully expose the man. It would essentially be his first solo mission for DedSec. They’d done their recon and knew Manny was supposed to be away from his house in San Francisco, spending time at his beach house in the Marin area. He had a routine when he went out to his beach house--have the cleaners run through, hire some caterers for the weekend, bring the guests in and essentially overdose on booze, recreational drugs and sex for three days. Based on his daily planner they’d examined, it sounded like full party prep so they expected him to be gone the whole weekend.

Except he wasn’t. Wrench showed up at the guy’s place about the same time the Auntie Shu Boys showed up with their delivery--some pretty, underaged girl who looked terrified. She had blonde hair and big eyes, couldn’t be more than 15 and she struggled to get away as the door opened and that Linden fuck stood there leering at her.

“What a perverted, fucking douchebag!” Wrench growled, explaining briefly to the team what was going on. Sitara and Horatio in unison said, “Wait for backup!”

To be fair, Wrench tried to sit still, grumbling the whole while. It was the slap that did it. The Shu Boys were dragging the poor girl inexorably toward the waiting scumbag at the door and she was fighting like a wildcat, to Wrench’s delight. He almost cheered out loud when she managed to kick one of them in the shin causing the gang member let go of her abruptly. But before she could swing around to wriggle out of the other one’s grasp, the first one swung his arm and backhanded her so hard her head snapped to the side and she would have crumbled to the ground if the other Shu Boy hadn’t been holding her up. Wrench saw red and completely forgot about the data they were supposed to be collecting.

The first grenade he shot with his handheld launcher landed about 25 feet behind the nauseating scene playing out at the door and blew the fuck out of the Shu Boys’ Hummer at the end of the drive. There were probably two or three gang members in it when it went. The next 18 minutes was pure madness--something Wrench excelled at and he built up the chaos around them with relish, firing grenades across the scene, careful to avoid getting too close to the girl’s position. He could vaguely hear Horatio and Sitara yelling at him through his ear piece, trying to figure out what was going on and then barked orders from Ratio telling someone to hack something or other. He heard multiple people telling him to let it go and get out of there and he distinctly heard Sitara say, “Why the fuck didn’t you wait for backup, you dumbass!” followed by Josh’s quiet voice saying he thought he could piggyback through Wrench’s phone and possibly pull the data anyway.

Meanwhile, the fucking Linden coward had immediately ducked back into his house and slammed the door--didn’t even grab the girl before scampering away and sending his goons out. Wrench switched to a handgun to pop the two fucktwats that were holding the cowering girl before ducking behind a hedge and working his way around the side, hoping the teen was smart enough to find cover somewhere. He only paused once to launch another grenade toward the opposite side of the driveway where Linden’s security and the gang members had settled under cover to try and take him out. Or so he thought.

As he rounded the hedge and crept behind a small wooden building not far from the house, he heard Sitara yell “On your left, Wrench!” and barely had time to throw himself around the side of the shed, crouching, before a shotgun blast splintered wood just above his head. The screeching sound of metal twisting had his head snapping up in time to see the a/c window unit dangling a moment before breaking loose and falling straight towards him. There was a sharp pain in his ankle as he scrambled out from under the 90 lb unit just before it hit the ground, plastic shrapnel flying in all directions from the impact. “Fuuuuck!” he breathed before aiming his handgun at the corner of the house from where the initial shotgun blast had come. He’d seen movement and although he was antsy to get over to the girl, he was hoping the idiot who’d shot at him would prove his lack of intelligence and stick his head out. He didn’t have to wait long. Less than five seconds later, the security guard was inching his head out from behind the house. Less than six seconds later, Wrench had plugged the guy right between the eyes.

His ankle was throbbing painfully so moving in a crouch was out of the question. It wasn’t too far to the garage where a cum-worthy performance car was doing double-duty as cover for the traumatized teenager, who had parked herself behind it and not moved since he’d shot the Shu Boys who had her. Wrench figured, with a little luck, he could make it over to the girl without a problem but getting both of them out alive was going to be a serious challenge.

“I need a distraction so I can get to her.” He ducked a little lower and peeked out from behind the shed. It looked like only one Auntie Shu Boy was left but Wrench was sure he’d be calling for backup shortly, if he hadn’t already. He counted four security guards and it looked like a couple of them were preparing to move in on the girl behind the car. He’d seen five guards come out and shot one, so all five were accounted for at the moment. Of course, he had no idea how many had stayed inside to protect Pedo Fucktard so he needed to keep an eye on the house, as well.

Horatio’s voice came through his earpiece with “We got you covered” a moment before there was a huge explosion on the far side of the house. The two guards that had been eying the teenager’s position immediately took off towards the explosion and while everyone’s attention was focused in that direction, Wrench shot out from behind the shed, hobbled toward the garage and threw himself behind the car, hoping no one saw him reposition. He couldn’t resist running his hand lovingly across the hood as he squatted with his left leg at an awkward angle to keep pressure off of his ankle. If he weren’t in the middle of some heroic-ass rescue mission, he’d be daydreaming about calling this beauty Lola and talking dirty to her while he drove around town at obscene speeds.

The traumatized teen wasn’t as traumatized as he expected. She was shaking a bit but she wasn’t curled up in the fetal position, blubbering. Heck, when he stopped drooling at the car after a moment and looked towards the girl, she was giving him a once-over with critical eyes. Her name was Astra and if his mask bothered her, she didn’t say anything about it. When he told her he was getting her out of there, she gave him a slightly quizzical look and then simply nodded.

It turned out she was 17 and had a driver’s license, which was a good thing since he was rapidly coming to the realization that they would probably have to split up if she were going to make it out of there safely. His original plan had been to drag her back the way he’d come, down the street and around one corner to his current ride (a rather sweet, blue 2008 Mustang Shelby he’d run across in town) so he could get them the fuck out of there. Except he could hear the sound of big engines and loud obnoxious music from somewhere east of them heading their way and he was willing to bet his favorite sledgehammer that it was gang reinforcements. Coupled with the remaining Shu Boy and a guard both moving to flank them in that same direction, he quickly decided they’d have to go through the house. A well-aimed shot from his handgun had the side door on the garage popping open (see, who has time for a fucking lockpick?) and he hustled her through the door in front of him, throwing his arm up and ducking a bit as a bullet hit the door jamb and splintered the wood behind them.

Of course now they couldn’t lock the door to slow down their pursuers so they had to keep moving quickly. He practically shoved her across the room, thankful she wasn’t putting up any kind of fuss, and used his handgun again to shoot the lock open on the door to the house. Astra flinched at the loud bang.

Wrench stepped cautiously into what was obviously the kitchen, pulling the girl quickly through the door behind him as soon as he saw it was clear. There was an island dividing the kitchen and a small-ish dining room so they ducked behind the counter while Wrench scoped things out. The dining room opened to a living room where he could see some sliding glass doors that led to the back yard. There was a tall wooden fence they’d have to navigate but he was thinking a straight shot across the backyard around the swimming pool, over the fence and then through the neighbor’s yard behind them should put them right about where he had the Mustang parked.

Wrench had essentially been ignoring the cacophony of voices from his earpiece since they’d set up the distraction for him but tuned back in when he heard Horatio start talking to him again.

“Wrench, you’ve got one security guy upstairs, two guys downstairs not that far from you and one of them from the front that followed you through the garage. Also, Auntie Shu backup just turned the corner. We’ll do what we can for distractions but I don’t think we can get anyone in time to help. Man, if you make it back here in one piece, I’ll buy you a damn case of beer.”

That was motivation enough for Wrench. He motioned for Astra to follow him and crept (gimped) toward the living room, stopping at the edge of the wall to peek around the corner. A shot rang out as Wrench ducked back behind the wall, followed by a ping and the sound of shattering glass as the bullet hit the chandelier over the table and set it swaying dangerously.

“Ratio, how close are the two guards to one another?” Wrench whispered, pulling Astra down to crouch behind him.

Sitara answered this time, “Between three and five feet.” Wrench smiled wickedly, thinking it was probably a good thing he had a mask on or he might have terrified poor Astra even further. He leaned toward the teen and whispered for her to run through the sliding glass doors as soon as he gave her the signal. She nodded, her eyes wide, probably trying to figure out what he was planning.

Josh told Wrench later that he must be suicidal to do what he did. Horatio couldn’t get past “crazy” as in “crazy-ass motherfucker” which he called Wrench multiple times while shaking his head and clapping him on the shoulder. This was definitely a time when Brandon had no say in the matter. Wrench stepped out from behind the wall and aimed his grenade launcher at the two security fuckers as bullets whizzed by him, lobbing off a grenade right between them. They scrambled to get away through the front door, but not fast enough. The explosion apparently took out a load-bearing wall because part of the second floor came crashing down, kicking up smoke and scattering debris about the place. Wrench stood in the middle of the chaos with a silly smile on his face, heavily considering shooting off another grenade when he heard Astra coughing behind him. Right. He was in the middle of being a fucking hero.

He pulled her to her feet and said “Now” with a winky sign on his mask. She gave a nervous little laugh, probably more from stress than humor, and murmured something about him being insane before heading to the sliding glass doors. They made it to the back fence in no time, only hindered by Wrench’s limp, and climbed over the fence into the neighbor’s yard. Thankfully, there weren’t any guard dogs here so it was only a matter of getting through the gate and out to the street. Wrench was still planning on having her drive in case he needed to provide cover fire so he got her settled into the Mustang and got the engine running. The last three minutes had gone too smoothly which meant it was bound to go tits up any moment now and it did, in the form of the Auntie Shu Boys. The reinforcements had apparently been filled in on what was happening and were turning the corner up the street and heading their way. So much for getting a head start. Wrench was ducked beside her car and, so far, they hadn’t been spotted. He leaned in the window toward Astra.

“Stay low in the seat for now and keep an eye on me. I’m gonna to cause a distraction, see if I can keep them focused on me while you get out of here.”

Astra looked at him wide-eyed again before nodding. “You really are insane, you know.” Wrench smirked under his mask and gave her another winky sign with a flippant, “And here I thought you didn’t even like me,” which made her laugh a little before he moved down the street a bit towards where the gang members were coming from. He was staying low enough that they couldn’t see him and was hoping the element of surprise would get them to focus on him and not notice the Mustang leaving.

Taking quick stock of things, Wrench realized he only had two grenades left and there were three vehicles coming at them. He was going to have to make these two count. He hacked a Beemer and sent it careening across the street to stop abruptly right in the middle of the road. The screeching of tires and squealing of metal against metal let him know he timed it perfectly. The sound of two solid thuds after almost had him jumping up and dancing since the SUVs behind the lead car had obviously not been able to stop fast enough, either.

He stepped out from behind the car he was ducked behind and planted himself right in the middle of the street not too far behind the Beemer he’d sacrificed. Wrench could see gang members start climbing out of the vehicles, pulling out weapons, yelling in Chinese. He glanced behind to the Mustang, catching Astra’s eyes as she stared at him before he turned around and shot the first grenade at the Hummer in the front of the line. As soon as the explosion lit up the sky, he heard the Mustang take off behind him. Now to just keep their attention on him. He shot his last grenade, hitting the second vehicle and watching the destruction with satisfaction. The explosion had probably killed a couple of gang members while the rest had scurried away like roaches trying to get out of blast range. Roaches with semi-automatic weapons. A few seconds later and those that had survived were aiming weapons his way. Tossing the launcher aside, he ducked and quickly limped toward the nearest parked car as a volley of bullets headed his way. The plinking sound of impact on the car was almost a relief--at least he hadn’t been hit. Slipping into the driver’s seat, he hoped they would assume Astra was hiding inside as he started it up and tore off across the field to the north, checking his rearview to make sure they followed him.

A couple of hours later found Wrench limping down the stairs at the hackerspace, exhausted and sweaty while the pain in his ankle throbbed in time to his heartbeat. He was greeted by Sitara throwing something at him (a book?) and yelling “Asshole!” But she also got a crate for him to put his foot up on and brought him his first beer. Horatio was vocal about how impressed he was and he made good on the case of beer. Josh explained how he’d managed to pull the data from Linden’s system while Wrench was running around getting shot at. Overall, it had been a good day--lots of explosions, they got the data they needed and Wrench got to pretend he was hero for a day.

The following day, Sitara made him follow up on Astra after she and Josh had put out some feelers to make sure the girl was ok. Apparently, the distraction had worked and Astra had made it home safely the night before, which was good enough for Wrench. For some reason he couldn’t figure out, Sitara didn’t agree and pretty much forced him to meet the girl at a local coffee shop. It turned out to be Astra’s doing--her father Robert wanted to thank the man who had saved his baby girl from such a horrible experience which, if Wrench had known in advance, he never would’ve showed up. Robert explained that he’d lost his son last year, Astra’s older brother Bobby, and he didn’t know what he would’ve done if he’d lost his daughter. Wrench sat in his chair, squirming uncomfortably and bouncing his leg while listening to Robert’s story and his emotional thanks. He was seriously considering bolting out the door when Robert suddenly handed him an envelope that he pulled out of his inner jacket pocket.

Confused, Wrench took it warily, opening it up and skimming through the pages twice before looking up with question marks on his mask.

“What…? I...” It was a contract to lease a small piece of property not that far from the hackerspace at no charge.

“I don’t need it. It was my son’s actually--he used to love rebuilding cars so he used it as a garage for working on his latest projects. My deli’s have always kept me busy and I never really had a love for mechanics the way Bobby did.” Astra slipped her hand into her father’s and leaned on him with a sad little smile. Robert glanced down at her with a quick kiss on the top of her head before continuing.

“Wasn’t sure what name to use. Astra said you went by ‘Wrench’? Though I’m not sure that would hold up in court if there was ever an issue. Whatever you want to use, just make a note and sign the papers then mail it back to the address on the envelope. I’ve got someone who’ll take care of filing it and send you a copy.”

Robert paused again, giving Wrench a sober look.

“I don’t think I can ever thank you enough for what you did for Astra but the garage is basically yours. It’s a perpetual lease with provisions in it to prevent anyone from selling or leasing it out from under you. Hopefully you’ll get as much use out of it as my son did.”

And that was that. Wrench was struck dumb for several minutes but Robert filled the silence with more thanks and not only shook Wrench’s hand but pulled him in for a one-armed hug before he and Astra left for home. It was a bit surreal, in Wrench’s opinion, but he couldn’t complain.

For the first time in his life, he actually had his own place. Obviously not in his own name cause that would’ve been a red flag waving in front of his father’s face but, for all intents and purposes, it was his. He spent the final week at his family home while he cleared out his new garage, added a cot that he could crash on, and set things up in the space to make it easy for him to work. When he reached out about all the tools and parts lying around, Robert told him he could have them. There wasn’t anything at the garage that the man needed to remind him of his son and he figured Wrench would get better use out of the stuff anyway.

His last day at the family home was a relief, if he were honest. While he’d enjoyed crashing in such a nice space and almost got hard thinking about hiding the data his father was looking for right under the man’s nose, in a manner of speaking, there were too many memories of his childhood there to make an extended stay all that enjoyable. And now that he had his own place for the foreseeable future and friends that were fast becoming like a real fucking family to him, his family home didn’t have as much appeal for him. He still went almost monthly to spend a day or two and skim through his father’s data but he never felt the urge to stay for longer than a few days at a time.

Nothing was perfect and considering his rather pathetic beginnings that wasn’t a surprise, but at least he had his own place to crash, tinker, build things, destroy them and then rebuild them. And he had friends, the type of people that would watch his back, put up with his shit and still welcome him back the next day.

All in all, life was pretty fucking good.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, that really is a flashback within a flashback within a flashback--so sue me.
> 
> If you find this story intriguing, you may want to check out the multi-chapter fic I'm writing that this was based on: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10096898/chapters/22490285 though you should be aware that it's still a work in progress at the time this was published.


End file.
